Monday, May 09, 2016

He Rises, Weicker on Trump

“’Out of 350 million people, we’re left with Donald Trump?
You’ve got to be kidding me,’ said former Gov. Lowell
Weicker Jr., an estranged Republican who has butted heads with
Trump. ‘I think it’s the last act in what has been a long string of Republicans
destroying themselves. I suspect after this election there will be a total
reformation of the party.’”

“Estranged Republican” is a delicate touch. During his last
year in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Weicker managed to compile an Americans for
Democratic Action (ADA) rating twenty points higher than that of U.S. Senator
Chris Dodd. The abrasive Republican continually abused his own party as a foil
to ingratiate himself with Democrats, who outnumber Republicans in his state by
a two to one ratio, a case of mathematics determining political orientation. After multiple batterings, the Connecticut
GOP at long last ditched Mr. Weicker in favor of then Attorney General Joe
Lieberman.

Considering the many similarities between M. Weicker and Mr. Trump,
one is tempted to put down Mr. Weicker’s fume to professional jealousy.

1) Both are mavericks, sometime Republicans who publically disdain
the party to which they are accidentally connected.

2) Both are much married, Mr. Weicker three times, Mr. Trump three
times – not that there’s anything wrong with that. Here in Connecticut both
Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman have been twice married. Politics takes a
toll on domestic bliss.

3) Both are sons who have acquired wealth as an inheritance
from rich relatives: Mr. Trump from his father, a real estate magnate who set
his son’s feet on the road to prosperity, and Mr. Weicker from his grandfather,
Theodore Weicker, who co-founded the E.R. Squibb Corporation, and his father, a
president and director of the company. As reported by the New York Timesin 1983, Mr.
Weicker was the wealthiest Senator in Congress, with holdings listed at more
than $7 million. Trump’s assets vary according to his mood, and he is very
moody. Forbes places his net worth at about $4.5 billion.

4) Both are draped in ivy: Mr. Weicker graduated from Yale,
Trump from Princeton, and yet both have adopted the speech patterns of New York
dock workers. In a brilliant skewering of Trump, comedian John Oliver quoted Mr. Trumpon his ivy league education – “I graduated from
Princeton. I know words” – and then noted that “the longest word in that
sentence was the word ‘words.’”

5) Both are irascible, possibly megalomaniacal, world
saviors. A review of Mr. Weicker’s ghost-written autobiography “Maverick” by
Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell is titled “Mr. Bluster Saves The World.”

These and other commonalities are too striking to ignore. Is
it possible that Mr. Weicker’s critical thunderclap is the result of
professional envy?

Mr. Trump now appears poised to do to the national Republican
Party what Mr. Weicker attempted, for twenty years and more, to do to
Connecticut’s State GOP – push conservatives from the heights, take over the
party and refashion it as a minor annex of the Democratic Party. Mr. Trump’s violent
slashes at conservative figures within the GOP have been unremitting. His
supporters hope that in a general election Mr. Trump may rain similar fire on
the head of the prospective nominee of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton.

The trick for Mr. Trump will be to hold on to his aces -- his
anti-establishment, establishment forces, powerful supporting voices such as
Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity, and Trumpites prepared to follow
their leaders into the chambers of Hell – while, at the same time, making
overtures to eccentric Democrats who regard Mrs. Clinton as a deeply flawed
Presidential candidate.

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist, is all but finished.
Ted Cruz and John Kasich have discontinued their primaries. It is altogether
possible that Mr. Trump may arrive at the Republican nominating convention with
sufficient delegates to cinch the nomination on a first ballot, marking a first
in GOP history. Mr. Trump is, like Mr. Weicker, a sunshine Republican, and he
most certainly is not a conservative. There is some reason to believe that he
is already in motion to cut his ideological jib, such as it is, to appeal to
Democrats who cannot stomach another Clinton presidency.

Mr. Trump, everyone may agree, is an able campaigner. The
answer to the question “What kind of a President will he be?” is blowing in the
wind.